Vernon Masters (Earth-199999)
| Death = | HistoryText = Vernon Masters was an enforcer for the Arena Club, the front organization for the Council of Nine, in the first half of the twentieth century. Vernon's duties for the Arena Club included covering up the activities of the political and economic elites who sat on the Council. In his public life, Masters was a representative for the War Department, often working alongside the FBI to keep the Council's activities a secret. In 1947, Vernon Masters focused his attention on the SSR following the theft of an Arena Club pin by Leviathan agent Dottie Underwood. Masters manipulated the chief of the SSR's East Coast branch, Jack Thompson, to give Masters a good deal of clout within the organization. However, Agent Peggy Carter and the West Coast branch's investigations into Isodyne Energy (whose owner, Calvin Chadwick, had a seat on the Council) began bringing the Arena Club's activities to light, forcing Masters and Chief Thompson to leave New York for Los Angeles to try and stop them. Agent Carter and Chief Daniel Sousa refused to cave to Masters' threats of blackmail and violence, much to his frustration. As Vernon Masters tried to keep the Council's activities from going public, Whitney Frost, Calvin Chadwick's wife, killed a majority of their members, including Chadwick. Frost, in addition to being a famous Hollywood actress, was also a brilliant scientist, and used Isodyne's resources to study Zero Matter, an extradimensional substance Frost believed would be the future of energy. She was infected by the Zero Matter as a consequence of the SSR's investigation into her husband's company, giving her superhuman abilities and control over the substance. Frost put herself in charge of what remained of the Council, and immediately tasked Vernon Masters with recovering uranium rods she could use to bring more Zero Matter to their world. Since the uranium was stolen by Peggy Carter, Masters rightfully assumed the rods were in the SSR's possession. Masters wormed his way into giving himself de facto command of the SSR's West Coast branch by forcing Chief Sousa to take a vacation after men working for Masters beat him up. Masters could not find the rods even with the SSR's resources, but Whitney Frost eventually found out they were somewhere in the SSR's labs. Before Masters could leave with them, Jack Thompson recognized the error in his ways and unsuccessfully tried to stop him. Masters took the uranium out to the desert, where Whitney Frost recreated the incident that created her initial supply of Zero Matter. Dr. Jason Wilkes was infused with more Zero Matter, but Chief Sousa, watching these events from a distance, fired a gamma cannon into the rift between the two worlds to prevent Whitney Frost from getting her hands on even more Zero Matter. Chief Thompson, who was now working with Sousa and Carter, convinced two SSR agents loyal to Masters to take them back to the Los Angeles office alive. Thompson then convinced Masters to use the gamma cannon to set a trap for Whitney Frost. Masters agreed to go along with Thompson's plan, as he saw Frost's power and rapidly deteriorating mental state as a serious threat. However, when they sprung the trap, Masters found out Thompson had betrayed him to Whitney Frost, and was actually trying to take both him and Frost down at the same time. He left Masters at Whitney Frost's mercy, but before she could kill him, the Zero Matter in Jason Wilkes burst out of his body. Masters was killed in the explosion. | Personality = | Powers = | Abilities = | Strength = | Weaknesses = | Equipment = | Transportation = | Weapons = | Notes = * Kurtwood Smith portrays Vernon Masters in the Marvel's Agent Carter episodes "The Lady in the Lake," "Better Angels," "Smoke and Mirrors," "Life of the Party," "Monsters," "The Edge of Mystery," and "A Little Song and Dance." | Trivia = | Marvel = | Wikipedia = | Links = }}